There are many parts of your home that could have money-making potential. A spare bedroom could be rented out to a lodger, while an empty area of your backyard could be used to grow vegetables to sell. You may have already considered these parts of your home, but one part of your home you probably hadn’t considered was your roof. Many of us never go up on our roof, but this unused space has a lot of potential. Below are just 3 examples of ways in which you can make money from your roof.
Provide solar power to your community
Many people install solar panels on their roof in order to enjoy a free source of energy for themselves. However, such solar panels don’t just have to be for personal use. Community solar projects have become very common in heavily developed urban areas – they consist of installing solar panels on a single property and sharing the power with neighbours who may not have access to a roof. Everyone who wants to get involved can chip in to help fund installation of the solar panels. Alternatively, you can charge energy fees for people to use your solar panels – which could be at a much cheaper rate than grid energy. You can read more into community solar customer acquisition here.
Grow crops on a rooftop garden
If you have a flat roof, it may be possible to turn this into a rooftop garden. This could be used as somewhere to relax, or you could potentially turn it into a vegetable patch to grow some produce. Rooftop farming in cities is thought to become very popular in the future and is already starting to gain traction. It is quite expensive to build a rooftop garden – especially one with safe access. Crops can be grown in raised beds or in a greenhouse to reduce conversion costs. The larger the roof, the more produce you can potentially grow. You can check out this post to see some spectacular rooftop farms.
Rent your roof out as advertising space
If you’ve got a home located on a busy street, you may be able to take advantage of this by setting up advertising space for a billboard. Such billboards are more commonly found on the side of homes, but can also be added to rooftops. You get to choose which advertisers are allowed to rent out your advertising space.Just be wary that billboards may not be allowed in some areas due to restrictions regarding protrusions from roofs. In other areas, billboards may be allowed, but may have to be placed in certain locations on the roof and may have to be a certain size. There are other inventive ways in which companies have used roofs of homes for advertising space that are less protrusive than a billboard that could also be worth looking into – check out this example of rooftop Coors ads that also double up as cooling features.